Labor Department under the first Pres-
ident Bush before going to work for
Armey. In 1998, she joined the Heri-
tage Foundation, where she had a series
of policy positions over the next decade.
(Her work for Heritage was well known,
which renders Justice Thomas's deci-
sion to omit it especially peculiar. In
January, he issued a statement saying
that information was "inadvertently
omitted due to a misunderstanding of
the filing instructions," even though the
document clearly called for the Justice
to provide "Spouse's Non-Investment
Income.")
Shortly before Obama won the Pres-
idency, Ginni Thomas took a position
in Washington, with Hillsdale College,
a small, liberal-arts institution in rural
Michigan. The school has no formal
religious affiliation, but it has been de-
scribed by National Review as "a citadel
of American conservatism." Thomas
ran a speaker series for the college in
Washington, called the Center for
Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.
After she was named to the post, she
said, in a statement, that Hillsdale stu-
dents "always study our Western heri-
tage, American history, and the Con-
stitution. Maybe some of what they
learn at Hillsdale will rub off" Thomas
brought in conservative speakers on
such subjects as "The Meaning and In-
tent of the Second Amendment" and
"The Constitutional Roots of the Free
Enterprise System."
After the Washington rally, Ginni
Thomas started Liberty Central, a non-
profit at the forefront of conservative
advocacy. According to tax records, it
was funded by two donations: one of
five hundred thousand dollars, the other
of fifty thousand dollars. Under current
law, she was not obligated to disclose
the identities of her contributors, and
she has not done so. Liberty Central
had a Web site, but mostly the organi-
zation appeared to exist to support
Ginni Thomas's travels. "Ginni created
Liberty Central more as an effort to
provide a switchboard in the conserva-
tive movement," Armey told me. "She
has always shown up in every fight I've
been in, and she's been on the right
side-that's my side."
Ginni Thomas spent much of 2010
on a coast-to-coast campaign against
the Obama Administration. As she said
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in an introductory video on her Web
site, "If you believe in limited govern-
ment, individual liberty, free enterprise,
national security, and personal respon-
sibility, and have felt these principles
are under attack from Washington,
then you've come to the right place." In
a later interview, she said, "I've never
seen, in my thirty years in Washington,
an agenda that's so far left. It's a radical,
leftist agenda that grabs a lot of power
to Washington so that Washington
élites can pick the winners and losers."
In his own speeches, Justice Thomas
expresses himself in terms similar to
those of his wife. Answering questions
recently in Florida, he said, "The gov-
ernment has to be limited. We have
separations of powers, and some of the
other enumerated powers that prevent
the government from becoming our
ruler. I don't know if that's happened
already."
Ginni Thomas's contempt for "élites"
also mirrors a theme injustice Thomas's
writings. Dissenting from Sandra Day
O'Connor's opinion upholding the
affirmative-action program at the Uni-
versity of Michigan Law School, he
wrote, "All the Law School cares about
is its own image among know-it-all
élites." In a concurring opinion in a 2007
case that invalidated school-integration
plans in Seattle and Louisville, he wrote,
.
"If our history has taught us anything, it
has taught us to beware of élites bearing
racial theories." In his autobiography, he
described the ordeal of his confirma-
tion hearings, as a time when "Ameri-
cà s elites were arrogantly wreaking havoc
on everything my grandparents had
worked for and all I'd accomplished in
forty-three years of struggle."
Ginni Thomas's particular target was
the health-care-reform law, which was,
in her view, clearly unconstitutional.
In Atlanta, in April: "I have been writ-
ing my congressman, and going to his
office. I waited for the August health-
care hearings and were there any town-
hall hearings? No." On Fox News, in
May: "The audacity of power-grabbing
that I'm seeing right now in cap-and-
trade, health care, the stimulus plan, it's
corrupt. It's a big power grab. It's pick-
ing winners and losers from Washing-
ton; it's abhorrent to our national prin-
ciples." At the Steamboat Institute, in
Colorado, in August: "We need outsid-
ers to help a constitutional audit to help
set up a system where Congress can re-
consider different functions, and pro-
grams, and agencies. . . . I think we
need a big spending reduction and no
new taxes. . . . I think we need to repeal
Obamacare." In Florida, noting her
support for Republicans running for
office in the midterm elections: "We
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 29, 2011 45